


Dear someone listening in the shadows I only talk to you sometimes

by TotemundTabu



Series: Commissions [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Gen, War of the Five Kings, also hints that Kevan knows about JC, mentions of Tywin/Joanna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 08:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18869458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotemundTabu/pseuds/TotemundTabu
Summary: Kevan & Tywin - Bonding during the War of the Five Kings - Shadows always belong to someone, so a man of shadows is never alone.





	Dear someone listening in the shadows I only talk to you sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> Another commission to help my friend Magda with her transition!!  
> If you want to commission me you can ask either here (but be logged in), via tumblr (robb-greyjoy) or via mail which you can ask under!
> 
> I hope you will like it!  
> I want to thank Joanna so much because she was of HUGE help during this period and she helped immensely my friend <3 I won't forget such kindness.

_Shadows are thick, but warm._

_Shadows always belong to someone, so a man of shadows is never alone._

_I left you the light – it fitted you more, you shone brighter, and I craved your care and approval more than glory – and, by doing so, I earned company. And you won an eternity of solitude._

_I remember the day she died._

_I remember the weeks, the months, the years before and that followed._

_Your secre_ _cy_ _increasing by the day, the way the bones in your fingers seemed more nervous at every gesture, the loss of appetite and the burning glares to everyone who even dared speak her name in your presence. As if even the sound of her name was sacred, and the idea of sharing it with o_ _thers_ _outrageous._

_Part of you died with her, I’ve seen you half a corpse dwelling through life since._

_Life, the little joy it held, disappeared and_ _dried up_ _on your lips; you chopped off every occasion to remarry or meet another happiness, just like you chopped and shaved your hair._

_And I saw you still fight for our family, for me, for your children, for our name too… but you didn’t seem to be here with us anymore._

_I wonder where the shy man I grew up with went, if maybe… if I open Joanna’s tomb, would I find you there? Crouching down next to her? Curling up to stare in her eyes? Sharing a pillow in the tight darkness of moist earth?_

_You had never shared much with anyone but her. And I took her place for you, but still you can’t laugh with me and I know that well._

_Because you find no real joy in th_ _is_ _world anymore._

_Satisfaction? Pride? Solace? Perhaps._

_And our brothers think you cold out of arrogance. I know better._

_It’s a necessity._

_It’s a defence._

_Your skin is the turreted walls of our House’s pride._

_But you won’t let me in._

“Are you sure about sending Tyrion to court?”

Tywin’s eyes slided, his glance meeting Kevan’s, “I thought you’d appreciate my twisted youngest son more than I did.”

“I do, but… - he sucked his lips – I am not confident Cersei will take orders from him easily.”

“She’s a proud one. -Tywin muttered – But she has to take them from me and I sent Tyrion in my stead.”

Kevan sat and drank more wine. It was the colour of winterberries as they caved in from the snow, and frozen dew sat on their branches. None of that strength was in the flavour, that was almost washed away from the water they mixed it with.

“When it’s time, we will have to marry her again. - Kevan murmured – A Tyrell, a Martell, when the situation with the North clears up, we will see more clearly.”

Tywin nodded, sucking his lips, biting them.

Kevan recognized the frustration, he knew where his thoughts were going: he had tried twice to marry Lysa Tully to his sons, first with Jaime, then with Tyrion. If he had managed, perhaps, now the situation with Riverrun would be different. Perhaps.

His son. Tywin clenched his fist and slammed it on the table, cursing.

“Maybe even a Stark.”

Tywin scoffed at that, “Cersei? In Winterfell? And to whom? To dear Lady Stark?”

“What of her son?”

“I doubt he’ll have the stomach to bed the woman who beheaded his father.”, Tywin shook his head. “There must be a way to make a peace, but I can’t find it.”

“Joffrey was a clamorous imbecile.”

Kevan sighed and sat next to his brother.

_He’s the son of his parents._

_But you don’t know that. Or prefer not to see it._

_It’s your only blindness and the only weakness you’ll allow yourself, I’ll have the mercy to not tell you._

_Each of us deserves our blind spots in life. Even the smallest._

_A cradle of comfort, a little white lie._

“He was…”

Tywin was biting his lips, his pale white teeth showing sharp as the ivory teeth of a boar. _I always wondered if he would have been the one to undo Robert. It was a job for a lion…_ Tywin was pensive, drumming with one of his phalanges against his chin, then stroking his jaw, knitting his eyebrows together, mumbling under his voice, almost in sepulchral silence.

His voice sounded hoarse and dark, when it emerged from the moist darkness of his mutism.

“Genna said Tyrion’s my son more than Jaime is.”

Kevan’s eyes widened, surprised. Then he frowned.

_He is._

_But I’m impressed she was bold enough to tell you._

Tywin’s voice is almost thin, then, there should be despise and anger in it, he wrinkled the nose, his mouth is a grimace, his skin tense; but it sounds almost as a sharp sob, a hard, unyielding and petrified prayer.

“That was pure rubbish.”

Kevan’s eyebrows lifted, relaxed, he swallowed, moving to his brother.

“Well, take it as a compliment.”

“A compliment? Did you see him?”

Kevan breathed in, “Did you see Jaime? For real? Staring at him, not just admiring what he could be. - he paused – He has Gerion’s regrettable sense of japes, Tygett’s reckless fighting… - _And my own submissive nature, its search of anyone else to lead, to take the role, how will I do when you’re gone, brother? I pray to die before you, I can’t bear the idea to have to be head of this House in your stead_ ; he bit his lips – He is a follower, Tywin. And he thinks little.”

“He just needs to be put onto it.”

“I do not mean to call him slow. - Kevan moved forward – He is smart alright, fair too, when he wants to be, but he refrains from thinking, it pains him. He escapes it. And you can’t rule like that… - he shook his head – You may not like Tyrion and I think I can guess why… there’s a bit of our father in him, in his fondness of women, in his need to be loved…”

Tywin raised his eyes and seemed to almost glare at Kevan, but not with ill-intention.

Kevan was well-aware he was moving a blazing dagger into a wound still fresh after more than twenty years, still bleeding Joanna out of its hems, still suffering salt and embers.

He cleared his voice, “But he’s like you, just as smart, just as able to see patterns and constellations where people see unbridled stars.”

“Don’t speak like a maester to me, Kev.”

“He is politically smarter than your other two children together, he’s smarter than me, and our brothers, not smarter than you, but… perhaps, with age, he’ll become it.”

“He’s ill-natured. - Tywin’s voice was tight, gravelly, made of dust and lost sleep, _lost love, lost Joanna_ – The body just shows what’s inside him.”

“Why, brother, your pretty children are not so much more righteous.”

Tywin scoffed, admittedly amused.

“Is this why you’re refraining from talking to Genna now? Don’t tell me that, these are not times where a man can afford to keep on his chest sweet words he may regret not having said.”

“You’re too soft, Kev. - he moved his fingers, though, as to invite him to pour more wine, for the little he drank – Genna wouldn’t have this feminine care for keeping her tongue tied.”

Kevan had to let out a small laugh.

“Genna knows she’s your favourite, brother.”

Tywin tightened his lips and adverted his eyes. His cheeks seemed slightly stained.

“She is… but this doesn’t mean she can speak to me like that.”

Kevan tried not to laugh, but shook his head, “Oh, dear, Tywin. It’s exactly because of how deep she loves you that she speaks to you so boldly.”

Tywin shrugged.

_I know you prefer my ways. Because you like to win, and to think you’re always right._

_And most of the times you even are…_

_But you must know I envy her too, because her words sink deeper with you than mine ever could; because you know, deep down, that she was always crystalline water and that she always told you just the truth, with no gain in being false._

_I know you prefer my ways, but it’s hers the ones you need the most._

_And that’s also why you married Joanna. Of! I rarely have seen a less passive woman, she was untameable in her refined elegance. She was unmovable stone like The Rock itself to anyone but you, and she allowed you command, she allowed you to lead._

_But you have never squished her under your fist and never had your voice counted more than hers in truth, between the two of you._

… _I often envied that._

_A marriage so full of parity._

_Genna herself doesn’t have that, nor any of our brothers._

_Tyrion, I wonder, may be the one closest to get_ _ting_ _that – if he ever marries, if you ever let him or order him to. He went close to it once, marrying out of sheer love, absurd as the youth is._

_But… just like you, isn’t it?_

_You’d kill me if I compared a little stable daughter to your Joanna, but is Love any different depending on its object?_

_For society, maybe; but in its essence?_

_If he ever marries again, a lady, I’m sure, I wonder if he’ll find that too: a lady smart as him, if not more, a lady who allows him courteously his command, but who governs him inside the bedroom. A lady made of steel under laces and ivory._

_If he does, I hope she’ll look good in coral. You may want to give her the coral jewels Joanna had, when you’ll see that Genna was not that wrong._

_I hope that day comes soon, the one in which you see your son as he is… before it poisons him, just like you were poisoned against our own father, Tywin._

_Maybe you forgot that. Maybe you forgot your anger, your frustration, the times and times again you clenched your fists wrathfully so tight that you sunk your nails in your palms and drew blood from them. But I won’t forget, I couldn’t._

_Because I was the one in your warm shadow, calming you and telling you that yes your day would have come and I knew you would have been a better man. But that you could hear, it wouldn’t hurt your pride._

_Hearing you have a so_ _n_ _who inherited all the true gold in your blood, the one you can’t buy but that shimmers from being a true lion under the sun, that… you can’t hear._

_It’d hurt you._

“We will see how well Tyrion behaves now in King’s Landing. - Tywin murmured – If he will bring that whore or not, for example.”

“Are you hoping to be disappointed or is it my impression?”

“I am not hoping for anything. - Tywin mused, with a lopsided dry smirk – I am just foreseeing being right.”

Kevan sipped some of the wine, then raised his cup, then drank again from it, “As you are a bit more often than always.”

Tywin rose from the table, putting his hands behind his back and breathing in.

“On another note…”

“Yes?”

“Send a missive to Genna. Ask her how she is, now that the Starks seem to be ally with the Freys, if she feels safe, if she needs my men. - he sucked his lips – If she knows how we can buy Lord Walder.”

Kevan chuckled.

_I could tell you that too: marry one of his scarecrow daughters to any of our nephews or cousins and he’ll be bent all over at your feet in an instant. That man is more abject and shallow than a dirty mouse._

_But you want to hear from Genna. You do realize, perhaps, that we are at war, and you may want to speak to your sister._

A smile. _Sometimes I see sparkles and shards of that tenderness you must have shown only to Joanna._

_And I understand better the man she loved, the man the twins miss, and Tyrion will always deem a jest or tale._

“I’ll send her a raven, then. - he promised – I’m sure she’ll be glad to receive it.”

Tywin gave a little scoff, “I reckon so. - he cleared his voice – But I hope she won’t insist in her conjectures.”

_Inferences, you mean._

“I hope so too, brother.”

“Kev.”

“Hm?”

Tywin paused, breathed in, “If I die in this war, I’ll need you to step up and lead this House. I do agree that Jaime is not ready.”

_Neither am I, brother._

_But I’ll be, if you need me to._

_I’ll always be all you need me to be._

 


End file.
